Is this typical of interior designers?
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Anonymous
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This is my first time working with a designer who came highly recommended by a friend. We pay her an hourly fee as well as a mark up on what she purchases. I have a couple concerns.
1. She has suggested a few things now that we decided we liked and then when it came down to ordering we have realized they won’t fit based on dimensions. For example, we need a chandelier for our room and she presented several options. There is one we loved but when I looked at the pictures of it online we realized it looked bigger than we imagined. I had her check the dimensions again and then she told us it would not actually work because of our ceiling height so she went back to the drawing board. Another example, we needed a console for our entry way and she sourced one we loved so we ordered it, but when it arrived it was just too big for the space. It technically fit but it looked really awkward. Shouldn’t she know this? My concern is that we are paying for her time to source these things, and why should I be paying her to research, purchase and return items that don’t work because she didn’t do her homework? Now she is going back to the drawing board and I am paying for more hours to source new items. 2. After the light incident mentioned above she presented more light fixtures but we didn’t love any as much. I ended up finding something similar to the original one online that would work for our space. The designer does not get a trade discount with this vendor but wants to charge us her standard 15% mark up to order. I guess the mark up is for placing the order and managing delivery/installation but it feels annoying since I found the item. Can I exclude it and manage it myself? Would you be questioning the designer overall at this point? |
Anonymous
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I wouldn’t continue using her.
Unfortunately, I have found that only the top high-end designers are worthwhile. The average interior designer isn’t going to offer you anything you can do on your own. You should be able to use the internet to find out how large of a console you need for your entryway. That’s what you have to do. The good designers are 50k plus and have long waiting lists. |
Anonymous
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I would stop working with her. There are lots of great designers out there, you don't need to work with one who can't measure! The markup on the item YOU found would be the last straw for me.
I say that speaking from experience. We worked with a designer about 5 years ago who sounds very similar to yours (maybe it's the same person?). There were lots of ordering problems, lack of overall concept for anything, lots of things that didn't fit in our space and had to be returned, she was very disorganized, and she was constantly trying to upsell us on items that she knew were more than we wanted to pay. It was so annoying, but it was the first time I'd worked with a designer so I didn't know what to expect. Now I'm working with a designer who is night and day different. He manages, measures everything twice, is very organized, stays within our budget and really listens to what we want. Best of all, there is a PLAN, with specific deliverables and and overarching design for our spaces. |
Anonymous
| Yeah, it sounds like this one is a dud. Checking the dimensions is the first thing. |
Anonymous
| No, definitely not normal! Does she have a degree in design or is she just a mom who thinks she’s a designer? I have worked with many designers over the years and ordering stuff that fits it literally the whole point of hiring a designer. |
Anonymous
| The entire reason I would want a interior designer is to HELP with things like size and scale. If they can't get that piece right, they'd be useless to me. I can order the wrong furniture all by myself! |
Anonymous
| Yes. Move on. I’ve worked with a designer on an hourly basis (not a super fancy ginormous project) and she never messed up on scale. I only once returned something where the finish was not exactly as pictured online…that wasn’t her fault |
Anonymous
| Yes, it’s called scale. And basic things like dimensions are not even scale- that’s just furniture ordering 101. She seems amateur. |
Anonymous
| How much did you pay her? Just curious. |
Anonymous
| I suspect your friend got paid commission for recommending the “designer”. Find someone else to do g to he job. |
Anonymous
I meant “to do the job”. |
Anonymous
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The scale issue is what our designer got really right. We had an empty room to fill and she took the time to do a scaled drawing and come up with a realistic layout.
She only charged us an hourly fee, no markup on furniture. She sourced from a wide variety of places and price points. In your shoes I’d move on to a different person. |
Anonymous
| Fire ASAP. And I agree with PP about the useless Mom-designers. I worked with one who had a fairly good eye, but she was touchy as h*ll whenever I didn’t like something she recommended. |
Anonymous
100% Facts! I would agree with everyone else that says to move on. Speaking from my experience with our designer - Gave us the option to order ourselves or pay an hourly rate for their time to order on our behalf and coordinate with no pressure for us to pick a certain way - Has been willing to pass along at least some of the trade discount when orders on our behalf - in cases where the item is only sold to people in the trade or the discount helps offset the hourly rate, we have gone this route - Has gotten the scale/size right - as mentioned above, to me this is a basic requirement of the job. Let me add that we also paid a fee for the visit where the designer measured everything as part of our first meeting after signing a contract so this was incorporated into their process - When there was an issue where the designer mis-measured, they stood by their work and made it right, they didn’t charge us for the return, re-order, and their time to do so |
Anonymous
How much was the hourly rate? |